Animalball Games: Safford Files

Lost Worlds Fantasy Combat Book Game

By Kyle

Do you like role-playing games, but find all the "story" to be tiring? Do you often find yourself at your regular D&D session asking your DM, "Hey, I'm stepping out for a cigarette since all we're doing is talking to the King about whatever it is he wants us to do. Can you make sure someone comes and gets me once we get into a fight?" Do you like your gaming sessions a lot like your porn: short on plot and long on action? If so, the Lost Worlds Combat System is for you. Basically, if the D&D Monster Manual had sex with a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Book, the bastard child would be Lost Worlds. That's right Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon, long before you were ever created as marketing tools for children, there was another fighting system: the Lost Worlds Combat Systems.

First published in 1983 by Nova Game Designs, the books originally sold for between five and six dollars (if my memory serves correctly). I purchased several books on ebay last year for about five bucks a piece, not including shipping. Each book was based on a different Ral Partha miniature, and even included a 10 cent off coupon for the purchase of the miniature. Thus, one of the books was "Man in Chainmail with Sword and Shield" or there was "Woman with Quarterstaff." Here's the covers of each:

There were literally dozens of these books, each based on a different Ral Partha miniature. They had halflings, trolls, giants, lizardmen, dragons, goblins and various and sundry other generic creatures. Each book came with a character sheet:

A single book was not a game in and of itself. How do I know this? Not from experience, I'll tell you. No, there is a fancy, large-print disclaimer on the back of each book which reads as follows:

To play Lost Worlds you had to have two books and two people willing to play. The latter is not as easy as you think. The players would trade books and keep their own character sheet-thus the Man in Chainmail would have the Woman with Quaterstaff's book and vice versa. The philosophy behind switching books, besides the basic game mechanics, is that the player is supposed to be looking through its character's eyes. Thus, the Man with Chainmail, we'll call him Ernie, would see the Woman with Chainmail, we'll call her Belinda-thus his character would have her book. The players pick permitted moves off their character sheet, turn to the page in their book assigned to that move, and announce their moves at the same time. You then compare the number assigned to your opponent's move and the chart on your page tells you to turn to a certain page for a result. Thus, Ernie suspects Belinda is going to do an all-out attack. He decides to choose Jump Away, and turns to page 16 of Belinda's book which looks like this:

The top part is irrelevant. For now what is important is the bottom part with all the numbers. He announces his move to Belinda, who tells him that she is doing a Side Swing Strong: Move No. 28. Looking at the chart, Ernie sees that he needs to turn to page 21 for his result which looks like this:

This is good for Ernie. Through this process you deal damage to each other and eventually one person runs out of body points.

Lost Worlds was a great way to kill fifteen minutes. The games were portable, self-contained and simple. Once the player can grasp the rules, it is the penultimate example of a pick-up-and-play game. I remember waiting for my folks to get ready for something and Mike would say, "Hey, want to play Lost Worlds?" And you'd just pick it up on impulse and play a few games. We'd take them on car trips and vacations, which was great because we couldn't always take our game equipment with us on these trips, but we always had room for a handful of Lost Worlds books.

The fun of Lost Worlds was in the purity of it. It was simple fighting. It was competitive. It took very little thought. There was something very satisfying in doing a Downward Smash when Mike would do a Shield Block High, and I'd get that beautiful picture of Mike's character with his splintered shield. Oh, you liked that shield, didn't you Man in Chainmail? Heh, heh.

Lost Worlds' simplicity was also its downfall. Its appeal in the first place was that the game is a gimmick. It is something new, clever and unusual and it's fascinating at first to see how the game operates. Unfortunately, after playing every once in a while for several weeks, we quickly realized that Lost Worlds is nothing more than a very elaborate version of rocks, scissors, paper. The entertainment value in trading moves and numbers is limited from its inception. After a couple of months, you're overwhelmed with the "so what" phenomenon that is the fatal flaw for so many gimmicky games. Worse yet were all the horrible knock-offs that were produced. Before we knew it, a dozen different companies were offering books "compatible with the combat book fighting systems" which had lame art, crappy moves, and tried to introduce alternate rules that simply didn't work in the system (spell casting just didn't work- no matter how many times they tried it).

However, Lost Worlds does have that incredible ability to sit at the bottom of your gaming pile for months without any attention. Then one day you pick it up and say, "Dude! Lost Worlds! Hey, let's play a game of Lost Worlds!" And you will and it will be great and after a week of this you will return it to the bottom of your pile of gaming materials for another six months. But for five or six bucks, this is a very good value for your entertainment dollar. It's not like the $19.99 you laid down on Marvel Super Heroes and still rant about in articles you post to your own website. But I digress. The long and short is that if you can find a couple of these books for ten bucks, I highly recommend them for the unique experience.